Lin Sanjiu quickly turned her head around, and the dark and long city road came into view. There were high and low rack beds by the side of the road, the heavy shadows of a few cabinets, the arm of the person sleeping soundly in the cubicle, the open-air stove with pots and pans, and the layers of cups and bowls … In the dark night, everything looked the same as when she first arrived.
"This is a trap. They are trying to distract me."
The moment she turned her head, her [Defense Forcefield] glowed faintly. Her muscles tensed up, ready to fight. However, Lin Sanjiu was stunned when she looked again.
The Eight-Headed Druid and the woman smoking by the window had no intention of attacking when they turned their heads. They were still staring behind Lin Sanjiu, but they had relaxed their guard. It was as if they had just experienced a false alarm. The Eight-Headed Druid let out a sigh of relief.
"What did you see?" Zhong Qing's reaction was almost the same as Lin Sanjiu's. He turned his head to look behind him a few more times. He bit his thin lips and couldn't hide his confusion. "Or, did you think you saw something?"
"My eyes must be playing tricks on me," the Eight-Headed Druid scratched his chin and tried to console Lin Sanjiu, "I thought someone was ambushing us. It's okay, it's okay. Let's go. "
Lin Sanjiu couldn't believe it. It was understandable for one person to be playing tricks on him, but how could two people be playing tricks on him at the same time?
They must have seen something in the city and thought it was something dangerous, something that shouldn't exist. That was why they were on high alert at the same time.
If that thing was a duoluozhong, Lin Sanjiu couldn't see anything in the city that could make people mistake it for a duoluozhong.
Lin Sanjiu's combat ability and sharpness were much stronger than the Eight-Headed Druid, so she didn't catch any strange sounds. Now that she was familiar with the smell and sounds of Fanjia City, especially at night, it was easier for her to detect something that shouldn't exist.
"You can explain it to them. I won't get involved." The woman smoking by the window did not want to get involved. She turned and walked away. When she passed by Zhong Qing, she even smiled at him. "Come and play with me next time. I'll bring you to a restaurant in Fanjia City."
Zhong Qing's face darkened, but he didn't say anything.
Eight Heads Druid said unabashedly, "It's like this. The area we patrol is indeed very far from the outskirts of the city. It's not a place where the duoluozhongs will crawl in first. However, the reason why I'm patrolling here is because four people have disappeared without a trace. I hope to find the reason during my patrol … There are many rumors in Fan Jia City, but you can't just believe everything you hear. Most of them are lies without any basis in reality. I repeatedly told them not to spread these things, but it didn't work. I don't know what kind of people believe and spread these rumors. "
At the end of his speech, he even got angry.
This explanation was indeed reasonable. Zhong Qing frowned and thought for a moment before asking, "Then what did you think you saw just now? We both noticed. You were on your guard for a moment. "
"To be honest, I don't know either." "If I knew what I was guarding against, perhaps I wouldn't be as nervous as I am now."
"But you always have guesses —"
"I don't want to talk about things I'm not sure about." Eight Heads Druid interrupted Zhong Qing. "In my line of work, if you don't have a code of conduct, do you know how big of an impact it will have?"
"Let's keep going," Lin Sanjiu felt that she should help him out. Unlike Zhong Qing, she didn't need to be paid. Eight Heads Druid was her biggest hope of finding Ji Shanqing and Yu Yuan. "No matter what the reason is, I'm confident that I can stop it."
Zhong Qing nodded reluctantly. The three of them continued on their way. The next few hours were as peaceful as before. As it got late, even the businesses that were open for business at night pulled up their wooden boards and closed their doors. The city road led the three of them forward. It was as if they were sinking into the depths of the dark and quiet earth. Lin Sanjiu would occasionally raise her head and look at the night sky through the hole in the ceiling. Only then did she realize that they were on a high mountain.
On both sides of the road, there were small rooms, tents, bed frames, and blankets made of all kinds of materials. There were people sleeping on them. Posthumans were used to patrols, so normal people wouldn't notice them. Therefore, very few people would wake up when they approached them.
When they had gone through Sector 5 for the fifth time, even Lin Sanjiu could vaguely recognize the way. There was a luxurious room that stood out from the crowd, a public toilet that wasn't very clean, and a "school dormitory". There were a few children sleeping on the bed frames behind the curtains. So, when Eight Heads Druid suddenly stopped, she looked around and understood what was going on.
There was a hammock with a person sleeping on it, but now it was empty.
The cloth that had lost its human weight had shrunk into a thin strip. It hung from the ceiling and swayed slightly.
"When we passed by this place last time," Eight Heads Druid swung the hammock as if a person would fall through the gap. He couldn't even suppress his voice anymore. "He was still sleeping here, right? Where is he? Look for him, quick! "
There were some cabinets, tables, and chairs around the hammock. On the side of the hammock, there was a small window made from a few bricks. The moonlight shone through the window, illuminating the empty hammock and the dust on the floor.
Lin Sanjiu didn't believe it. She even pried open the cabinets, but she couldn't find the person. She remembered that the person sleeping here was an unevolved man. Even when he was asleep, he was still a hilarious sight. She didn't know where he heard about the world before the apocalypse. He wore a flowery shirt, slept in a hammock, and had a map of the sea on the wall. He made the ghetto look like Hawaii.
But now, he had disappeared from the Hawaii that he had created himself.
"Did he crawl into someone's tent?" Zhong Qing looked around and became a little nervous. "We have checked a few times, but there's nothing …"
They couldn't control their voices. The people around them were stirred up, and they all woke up. Someone pulled open the zipper of the tent, and someone shouted "Who is it?" through the wall. Eight-Headed Druid grabbed the man who had just poked his head out of the tent, pointed to the hammock and asked, "Where is that man? Did you hear anything? "
The man had just woken up from his sleep, and he was immediately surrounded by three hunched posthumans. He was startled and said, "I … I was asleep. How would I know? Did he go to the toilet? "
"If he went to the toilet …" Lin Sanjiu straightened her back when she heard that. She turned around and glanced at the public toilet on her way here. If she went back now, she would still have time …
However, she didn't move.
It was as if the pause button had been pressed on Eight-Headed Druid and Zhong Qing. For a few seconds, no one moved, no one spoke.
"It seems like everyone saw it.
They must have seen it from the corner of their eyes. "
The man who peeked his head out of the tent looked up at the three posthumans who suddenly froze. They didn't say a word, and a puzzled expression appeared on his face. "What …"
Before he could finish his sentence, his gaze was drawn away by something else. He squinted his eyes in the dark and heaved a sigh of relief. He pointed at the window on the wall beside the hammock and said, "Isn't that guy standing there?"
Lin Sanjiu tensed her body and slowly turned her head toward the window.
The man in the tent was still babbling, "That scared me. I thought someone had gone missing again. So, he went outside the wall. Alright, if there's nothing else, I'm going back to sleep … "
Lin Sanjiu had no idea when the man in the flowery shirt was standing outside the wall. More precisely, there was a man's face in the small window on the wall. Lin Sanjiu couldn't see anything below his chin, so she didn't know if he was wearing a flowery shirt or not.
"How did he …" Zhong Qing said softly, but she didn't finish her sentence.
Lin Sanjiu knew what he meant. There were no openings on the ceiling in this section of the road. There were only small windows the size of a human head on the wall. If the man in the flowery shirt wanted to run outside the wall, he would have to walk a few dozen meters forward or backward, jump onto the nearest opening in the ceiling, and then climb out of the wall.
However, the posthumans didn't hear any footsteps coming from the city.
His face blocked the moonlight from the small window. Only the top of his head and his cheekbones were illuminated by the moonlight, but his eyes could be seen clearly in the darkness. His eyes, however, were distinct in the gloom: they glowed faintly, and moved from side to side with his gaze.
"Hey," Eight Heads Druid was the first to step forward. He stopped a few steps away from the window and called out to the man. His melodious voice was a little shaky. "Are you the person who was sleeping on the hammock just now? Why did you go out? "
Zhong Qing took two steps back.
In the head-sized window, the human face was still silent.
"Speak," Eight Heads Druid raised his voice and asked, "Don't you know me?"
The force in his voice shattered the shuddering dreamland of Fan Jia City. Many people got up from their beds, including a few posthumans who seemed to have woken up a long time ago.
"What's going on?" someone whispered. "Isn't that Apoo? What is he doing? "
A female posthuman took two steps forward. It seemed like she was about to question the man called Apoo, but when she opened her mouth, she gasped.
"What's wrong?" Eight Heads Druid immediately turned to her.
"That's not right," the female posthuman stared at the man in the window. Lin Sanjiu didn't know who she was talking to, "There is another street outside the wall. His hammock is separated by another house. I've seen it before. He's standing outside. Where exactly is he standing? Why is he standing on someone's mattress? "
"If he's standing on the mattress, then the person on the mattress …" Before Lin Sanjiu could finish her thought, the man turned left and right a few times and tried to reach into the window. One of his ears scraped the windowsill and was exposed to the air. His chin was stuck on the windowsill, leaving no space for his neck.
"He wants to come in?" Another evolved human suddenly shouted. "He wants to come in, doesn't he? Don't let him in! Stop him! "
Even though Apoo was a normal person, he seemed to be afraid of him, even though there was no reason for him to do so. Besides, how could a person come in through a window the size of a human head?
"There's something wrong with him," the female posthuman said in a low voice. "I know, I know what's wrong with him …"
"What's wrong?" Zhong Qing asked.
It was at this moment that Lin Sanjiu suddenly understood what Eight Heads Druid was worried about. She also understood why she didn't notice anything strange. What he was worried about was probably the most common thing in Fan Jia City. How could she sense that something was wrong?
"The normal people here are mutating!"
When the female posthuman said that, Apoo's head was still stuck on the windowsill. However, all of the posthuman could feel a slippery sound coming from the other side of the wall. It was as if something was being pulled out of the window.
Now, there was only one head stuck on the windowsill.
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